5. Discussion and Conclusion
The aim of this study was to examine the validity of speeded cloze elide test as a measure of overall proficiency in English as a second language among Iranian EFL learners. One hundred and fifty B.A students of English were selected using convenience sampling. Five cloze-elide passages along with two multiple-choice cloze passages, four C-Test passages and a reading comprehension passage containing 12 multiple-choice items were administered to the participants.
The correlations between speeded cloze elide and the criterion measures were strong and significant. If we consider multiple-choice cloze test and C-Test as valid measures of overall language proficiency with the high correlation that is observed between cloze elide and these measures the validity of speeded cloze elide as a measure of foreign language general proficiency is supported. Furthermore, the cloze elide has a strong correlation with the reading comprehension test which is evidence that the speeded cloze elide is also a valid measure of reading comprehension. The criterion measures are also strongly correlated. The high correlations between the multiple-choice cloze test and the C-Test (r =.80, p <.01, n =150) indicates that these two tests of reduced redundancy which have very similar structures measure the same constructs. The strong correlations between the C-Test and the reading comprehension test (r =.83,p <.01, n =150) and the multiple-choice cloze test and the reading comprehension (r =.81, p <.01,n =150) supports their validity as measures of reading comprehension with the C-Test being a slightly better measure of reading comprehension.
The correlation between the C-Test and reading comprehension was slightly higher than the correlation between reading and the other two tests. These findings suggest that the C-Test is a better measure of reading than multiple-choice cloze and cloze elide.
Principal components analysis showed that all the variables, i.e., speeded cloze elide passages, multiple-choice cloze passages, C-Test passages, and the reading comprehension passage, loaded on a single factor with very strong loadings. This means that all the variables measure a single dimension. Since all the variables strongly load on a single factor and multiple-choice cloze test and C-Test are established measures of general language proficiency the validity of the speeded cloze elide as a measure of overall second language proficiency is also supported.
The results of the present study indicated that speeded cloze-elide test is an authentic measurement tool to assess the overall foreign language proficiency. When time constraints were imposed, the differences of examinees became more obvious in the speeded cloze-elide test. It was found to be easy to administer, construct and time efficient. It is recommended that further research considers the general language proficiency test, anxiety and intelligence of the learners. Furtherrmore, analysis of the speeded cloze elide test with item response theory models for timed tests like the Rasch Poisson model (Baghaei & Doebler, 2018; Jansen, 19) is recommended.